Geoffrey Hinton has admitted that he regrets a large part of his life’s work. He and two other “Godfathers” of AI shared the Turing Award in 2018 for their groundbreaking work, which led to the current boom of artificial intelligence. a recent interview with Hinton in The New York Times revealed that the 75-year old recently left Google to be able to freely speak about the risks associated with AI.
“I comfort myself with the usual excuse: If I had not done it, someone else would have,” Hinton said, who was employed by Google for over a decade. It is difficult to imagine how bad actors could use it in a bad way.
According to the New York Times, Hinton informed Google of his resignation in a letter last month and, on Thursday, he spoke directly with CEO Sundar Pichai. The details of the discussion have not been disclosed.
This work ultimately led to ChatGPT, Google Bard and Google Bard.
After Google acquired the company founded by Hinton, two of his former students and one of them who went on to be chief scientist at OpenAI, the lifelong academic was hired. Hinton and two of his students developed a neural net that learned to recognize common objects such as dogs, cats and flowers by analyzing thousands photos. This work led to the development of ChatGPT, and Google Bard.
Hinton, according to an New York Times interview with Hinton, was satisfied with Google’s management of the technology, until Microsoft introduced the OpenAI-infused Bing. This new product challenged Google’s core business, and sparked a ” Code Red” reaction within the search giant. Hinton believes that such fierce competition may be impossible to stop. This will lead to a world filled with fake images and texts, which no one will be able “to tell what is true any more.”
Jeff Dean, Google’s chief science officer, tried to ease the blow by stating: “We are committed to a responsibly-based approach to AI.” We are constantly learning about new risks and innovating.
Hinton took to Twitter as well to clarify his position regarding Google’s stewardship.
Hinton is concerned about the spread of misinformation, but that’s only his immediate concern. He’s concerned that AI could eliminate mundane jobs and humanity as it begins to write its own code.
Hinton told the New York Times that “the idea that these things could get smarter than humans — some people believed that.” “But the majority of people thought that it was a far-fetched idea. “I thought it was a long way off.” I thought that it would be 30 to 50 or even more years away. “I no longer believe that.